Man schenkt keinen Hund – (No)Bildbeschreibungen und Interviews
Scriptings#47: Non-consensual texts and interviews by and with course participants, lecturers, activists and artists on the “integration courses”
3,99 €
The point of departure for the writings, interviews, and artistic contributions in Man schenkt keinen Hund (You Don’t Give a Dog as a Present) are the German language-learning course books which are authorized for use in the so-called ‘integration courses’ for immigrants by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. The textbooks available on the market represent and narrate migration, and those involved in it, primarily through the lens of a national scopic regime: a ‘German’ majority society is here invariably center-staged and framed as representing the norm, apparently unaffected by migrant movements.
Man schenkt keinen Hund brings together a multiplicity of perspectives by the contributors – artists, theorists, activists, and students and teachers in the courses – to question the concept of culture recorded in the course books, in their texts and imagery, as the expression of an ostensibly homogeneous national identity. It gathers analytical observations and artistic propositions to articulate a critique of the ideological concept and governmental instrument of ‘integration’ – especially in light of the recent and cyclically recurring debates in Germany around ‘Wertegemeinschaft’ (‘community of shared values’) and ‘Leitkultur’ (‘core culture’).
The e-book edition Man schenkt keinen Hund – (No) Bildbeschreibungen und Interviews presents itself as an excerpt from the print version. In addition to a conversation about teaching in ‘integration courses’ and a colonial-pedagogical close reading of a selected textbook chapter, the e-book assembles the entirety of the so-called ‘(No)Bildbeschreibungen’ [(No)picture descriptions], a literary-essayistic short format.
Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Bezirkskulturfonds Mitte
Christine Lemke
Christine Lemke lives and works as an artist & author in Berlin. She studied literature and fine arts in Düsseldorf and at the HfbK in Hamburg and held a postgraduate scholarship at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
She publishes essays, catalogue contributions and reviews. Her own writing often forms the starting point and frame of reference for her artistic practice. Her combinations of appropriated visual material and the text forms that emerge from it / with it come to the stage as performative readings, editions, audio pieces or videos & pursue an image-critical approach by elaborating autobiographical, historical and socio-cultural narratives motivically and / or turning them poetically.
In addition to her artistic work, Christine Lemke teaches German as a second language in “integration courses” at a migrant association in Neukölln.
Achim Lengerer
In his artistic practice, Achim Lengerer deals with the political effects and functions of language and text. In addition to cinematic soundtracks, installations and publications, his forms of expression include performative lectures and events.
Lengerer founded various collaborative projects, including the freitagsküche in Frankfurt on the Main. Since 2009, Lengerer has run the mobile exhibition space and publishing house Scriptings.
2017 Participation in documenta 14 with the 21-hour radio work different time, different place, different pitch (with Dani Gal) produced by Savvy Funk and Deutschlandfunk. PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Eds.: Christine Lemke in collaboration with Achim Lengerer
Text: María do Mar Castro Varela, Zandile Darko, Carola Deye und Nounnou Oumarou, Aïcha Diallo, Richard Djif, Mutlu Ergün-Hamaz, Bahati Glaß, Nanna Heidenreich, Susanne Holschbach, Karolin Meunier, Elske Rosenfeld, Mithu Sanyal, Eran Schaerf, Aretha Schwarzbach-Apithy
Design: Janine Sack, Lena Appenzeller
German
Approx. 120 pages
epub (400 KB)
July 2020
ISBN 978-3-947295-30-2
3,99 Euro
The print edition with further contributions is published by Scriptings and Archive Books: archivebooks.org
ISBN 978-3-948212-02-5
15,00 Euro
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